Improve UI - Standarize, make intuitive.

[ivanperez-keera]

It's hard to argue UI stuff. But I think the UI is a bit clogged and confusing. See:

This is my first attempt:

More improvements would be possible. Some work would be necessary in the bottom area to make the buttons clearer. I'd suggest re-labeling the Put in outbox button as Send now, possibly moving the 15-30min/2-hour buttons up to the time-selection area, and making sure that the button in the bottom right corner is "Send later".

For anyone who wants to attempt this, the UI is defined by: https://github.com/jikamens/send-later/blob/master/chrome/content/prompt.xul

(And, btw, thanks for this plugin. It's really useful :) I bet the French will start loving it soon with the new law.)

[ivanperez-keera]

(The double horizontal bar at the bottom is a mistake. I only meant to add one.)

[ivanperez-keera]

Also: the time selection buttons that accompany Between and the day selection checkboxes that accompany Only on should probably be greyed out when the leading checkboxes are de-selected.

[jikamens]

I'm happy to consider PRs, but I don't have time to deal with this kind of thing right now.

I'd suggest re-labeling the Put in outbox button as Send now,

1. "Put in outbox" and "Send now" are in fact two very different operations.

2. That button sometimes is labeled "Send now." See the user guide for why you only see one or the other at any given time.

The "Put in Outbox" button is the singular most confusing aspect of the interface. I get complaints about it no matter what I make it look like. There is a detailed tooltip on it that nobody ever reads. Basically, it's a no-win situation.

Also: the time selection buttons that accompany Between and the day selection checkboxes that accompany Only on should probably be greyed out when the leading checkboxes are de-selected.

Nope. When you select one of the days or edit the date or time picker The leading checkbox is automatically selected. This saves on clicks. It's an intentional UX decision.

[ivanperez-keera]

Thanks for taking a look and taking the time to explain your decisions.

I'll see what I can do. I may be able to help a bit more if I can edit the interface easily. Without searching, can you recommend a graphical UI editor to modify the xul file?

[jikamens]

I don't know of a graphical XUL file editor.

Here's how you can edit the UI and see your changes in Thunderbird:

1. Set the preference nglayout.debug.disable_xul_cache to true.
2. Set the preference extensions.startupScanScopes to 5.
3. Install the add-on in Thunderbird.
4. Clone the git repository.
5. Shut down Thunderbird.
6. Go to the extensions subdirectory of your Thunderbird profile.
7. Remove the file sendlater3@kamens.us.xpi.
8. Create a file called sendlater3@kamens.us and put the full path name of your cloned source tree in it.
9. Launch Thunderbird with thunderbird -purgeCaches.

After you follow all these steps, your cloned source tree should be live in Thunderbird. Each time you pop up the Send Later dialog, Thunderbird will reread the XUL file.

The one oddity you will notice is that in some parts of the UI you will see {NAME} instead of the add-on. I do a token replacement on that when I build the XPI file, but it won't be replaced in the source tree. It's harmless.